


winters fall, storms end

by ADaftMyriad



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: F/M, Rating for future, post 8x05
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-18
Updated: 2019-05-18
Packaged: 2020-03-07 09:07:19
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,904
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18870103
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ADaftMyriad/pseuds/ADaftMyriad
Summary: The war is won and Arya's had a change of mind."Arya paused in the forge doorway. There he was inside it like always. Hammering out a steady beat, like always. The man she’d rejected. The man she hadn’t been able to say goodbye to."





	winters fall, storms end

**Author's Note:**

> Just a bit of Gendrya reuniting before episode six can take it away from us ;)

There was no fanfare. No great announcement or reception at her return to Winterfell. The road home had been long and weary, growing colder it seemed with each step once she was past The Neck. She’d thought of Winterfell’s heated floors, of fires burning as brightly as her sister’s hair, of dark corners under archways where the heat of another’s body could keep you warm enough.

She didn’t need to wait for the guards at the gate to decide whether to allow her access. She walked through as Arya Stak, a cursory nod to them and she didn’t head straight down to the crypt like she had on her first return when she reunited with Sansa. She headed for a place of light and warmth where the one face she would be happy to spend the rest of her life looking at surely resided.

Arya paused in the forge doorway. There he was inside it like always. Hammering out a steady beat, like always. The man she’d rejected. The man she hadn’t been able to say goodbye to.

They’d spoken after her refusal. It had been very friendly. She’d ignored the small part of her that wanted to ask him if they could repeat the night before the battle again. She still wanted him even if she didn’t want to be his lady. Still desired him.

That night had been something new. Something based purely on achieving a goal but she’d never set her sights on one like it. Her list had had the ultimate goal of revenge. Death to those who had killed and betrayed her loved ones was the only pleasure she’d sought and it was a gratification derived only from death and destruction, blood and bruises. Hacked up limbs and peeled off faces.

That night, with Gendry, had had more softness, more delight, more simple joy than she’d known before. Urgent touches, thrills, ecstasy under her skin like the first taste of fresh water after a sea voyage. It had been about pleasure from start to finish and it was the only mission she’d had in the past years that hadn’t hurt at all in its execution.

Except, perhaps it had. After.

When they spoke again following her refusal he smiled, tried to make jokes with her about travelling to King’s Landing. Tried to recommend the best drinking hole to go to when she was there. Tried, more seriously, to tell her the best places for cover. He played it off like they were good places to regroup, to launch a hidden attack from and tried not to say the word he wanted to; hide.

But when the jokes fell flat and when he stopped trying to laugh his smile fell too fast and his eyes could no longer hold hers. He’d look down to the ground or away. And her heart would start aching and her skin would crawl and it wasn’t with need like it had that night but with that familiar disgust at herself, at what she’d done, what she’d become.

Eventually Gendry picked up his work and looked at it rather than her as they spoke.

When she’d quizzed him enough about King’s Landing, trying to fill in the gaps of her own knowledge of the Keep and getting lost in its streets all those years ago, she’d watched him for a little while. She wasn’t sure he realised she was still there, sitting in silence with him before she left him hammering away. She’d left early the next morning, unwilling to say a goodbye to him in case that meant she would be allowed to come back and say it later.

 _I have unfinished business here too_ , she’d told herself. Because that was the best way she knew to survive. And if believing she needed to come back here might help her live long enough, even if it was only to get inside the Red Keep and kill the Queen, it would be worth it. Wouldn’t it?

And if she lived beyond that? That would be for her family; for Jon and Sansa and Bran. So she could return home to Winterfell, a reward to them for all they’d lost in this war. But there was another name on that list.

And here Gendry was only a few yards away and all she had to do was say hello.

Her mouth opened and she summoned her voice to speak but all it did was die in her throat, choking on an inhale of sooty air flowing from the forge. Her mouth turned as dry as a Braavosi street and she remembered the ashen streets of King’s Landing. She felt the layer of it covering her skin again, smothering her face and her lungs.

The ironwork hissed. She heard the faint screech of a dragon. Her lungs pulsed furiously attempting to suck in air and she tried to speak, to call out to him. He didn’t hear her, he didn’t see her. The face of that small girl, crying out for her mother in the burning streets, just as lost as she once had been amongst them formed in her mind.

Gendry plunged the steel he worked on into a bucket and a plume of steam arose. Arya saw the ashen mist all around her, the debris of stone and people crumbling. It had been whiter than she’d thought. King’s Landing had fallen like snow. And she’d never wanted to be further from it. It was broken up only by swathes of red, the city bleeding, just as the fallen’s blood from the Battle of Winterfell had stained the snow.

 _But it’s done. It’s over,_ she told herself. _I survived. We survived._

Through the mists of memory, through the steam Gendry created, he looked up and their eyes locked.

_I have him. He's alive and he's mine._

She ran to him. Wrapped her arms around him tight as she jumped into his. The feel of him sent a sense of relief so deep within her she felt it in her bones. He stumbled back with the force of her, knocked into the anvil behind him and toppled over bringing her down with him. They narrowly missed the flames.

Gendry coughed and spluttered and amongst it she thought she might have heard her garbled name. She pushed herself up until she was sat astride him. He stared, a slow grin starting to curve on his lips as he took her in.

‘I’ve changed my mind,’ Arya said, her voice back under her control. ‘I’m going to marry you.’

Gendry's mouth hung open, his chest heaving slightly. The breath had been taken from his lungs and his hand was halfway to her face when it froze at her words. She stared back at him, her eyes searching his as her heart beat thunderously. He let out a laugh of disbelief, his hand hanging in the air.

‘Oh you are?’ he said. ‘Well what if I’ve changed—’

‘You haven’t,’ she said shaking her head as if it simply couldn’t be because she didn’t walk away from revenge not to be able to walk into his arms. ‘Have you?’ she asked, her eyes softened looking almost as frightened as they had the day she’d first ran from the Red Keep many years ago.

Gendry smiled and cupped her face. ‘Course not.’ He pushed himself up with his spare arm and used the hand on her face to bring her lips to his.

The kiss was slow. Tender. She felt cherished by the way he held her to him. This had been worth it, this had all been worth it to see that look on his face. To have him kiss her like this. The urge to hold him, to touch all of him began to build inside of her.

Gendry broke the kiss to run his fingers over her face as if checking she was real.

‘I’ve got more scars. Not so beautiful,' she said watching him drink her in. He had told her she was the night he proposed. She thought it might have been the first time anyone had. She didn't think she'd cared to hear it until it came from him. Most of the bruising had faded but she'd added jagged lines to her face and some of it was still red where it had been brushed by fire.

‘Didn’t care about them before. Don’t care now.' He traced a finger down the one across her cheek. 'Survivor.'

Arya pulled him to her this time. Kissed him like she'd been dreaming about since she'd left. Tried to show him that this wasn't just about one night of need before they died. This was about living.

The first time Arya had left King’s Landing, with Yoren’s men, she had started to die.

Slowly. Becoming Arry. Many other anonymous boys and girls along the road. When Arya resurfaced she would get captured, by the brotherhood, by The Hound. She’d refused Brienne’s help to instead become no one. To become many someones with the Faceless Men.

And then she’d returned. Most of her. Some of her. And it wasn’t until she went back to King’s Landing that all of her came together again. And she left it living.

'Just to be clear,' Gendry said breaking from the kiss, breathless, 'we are talking about the humiliating proposal of marriage I attempted before you left?'

'Yes. That embarassment.' Despite her teasing Gendry grinned at the confirmation. 'I won't be much of a lady. But I'll be me. Again.'

'That's all I wanted,' Gendry said peppering kisses on her lips.

Arya sat back. 'Are you just choosing me because you think no other highborn will have you?'

'Gods no!' Gendry said. 'You didn't really think that?'

 _Of course_ it had crossed her mind that she was the best he thought he could get. The one who would forgive his unsophisticated ways. And that having released him from his request he may have even started looking for another to make his lady.

Gendry's voice was somber, 'Arya...' he tipped her face up to his, 'there are so many more women than just the highborns who wouldn't want me.'

She swatted his arm and he grinned.

'I can change my mind again!' she warned.

'No,' he said, pressing his forehead to hers and tightening the arm around her. 'You don't _want_ to change your mind again. You say what you mean. And that's why I want to be with you.'

Arya wanted to continue being angry at him but that was the type of thing she was working on letting go of. Besides he said the very words she wanted to hear. And he was an excellent kisser.

'Well why didn't you just say that in the first place? Would've saved me worrying about how I was going to find a match good enough for you that I could approve of.'

'Firstly, who said I needed your approval - and was that, did you just compliment me? Is that a thing you do now?'

'I've always done them! When they were earned.'

'I had definitely earned one. Maybe two, even.' Arya quirked a brow. 'No! Three!' he continued, another coming to mind.

'Gendry, shut up and I'll show you something else I think you're good at.'

His reply was muffled by her lips on his. She felt him trying to stop himself smiling. She'd forgotten just how warm he was even here in the northern winter where half the time all he did was complain about the bloody cold. He couldn't be contained it seemed and he ended the kiss to speak.

'I was going to wait,' he whispered, his eyes intense. 'For long enough. Longer. However long it took. Even if it never did.'

Gendry's words made her heart swell. Surely he was too good for her. When he had told her he loved her the way she felt for him hadn't factored into her refusal. How she felt was irrelevant. She wasn't made for living only surviving. Now she hoped that his words were true and that what she had to give him was what he wanted in a wife.

'Me too.' And she would've. Probably would've done something awful and stupid and bullheaded and waited till her dying day to let herself truly love him if she hadn't listened to Sandor in that moment yet had still survived assassinating Cersei.

Loving Gendry felt like having her feather down bed back again - a luxury she didn't need and couldn't afford to get used to. It had taken weeks, night by night, before she could let it take the weight of her. And even then she never fully relaxed at night. She couldn't. Not since she'd started sleeping rough on the streets years ago and learnt a hundred ways to sneak up on and kill someone in the night.

The same process had happened with her acceptance of her love for Gendry over these past weeks. Slowly but surely she had sunk into it until she'd realised that perhaps, just perhaps, it had started to bouy her back up. And terrifyingly she felt like she might be brave enough to let him take the full weight of her.

She could survive without a feather down bed. She could survive without Gendry - but she didn't have to. And she had to remind herself of that every day; she was allowed to want things.

Arya had thanked Sandor before she walked away from a life fuelled by revenge and hate and a cold fury she'd known for so long. And she wished she could thank him again now only he'd probably tell her to fuck off and ignore her invite to the wedding. That would have made her smile.

She'd been young again. She'd been her father's daughter again when Sandor's hand fell on her shoulder after he told her to go, told her not to become him, warned her that if she came with him she would die there. She breathed in life again and all the pain and loss it brought with it as she'd left him, as she'd run for her life through King's Landing. But at least she was living and at least she was running to something, for something, other than just to survive until the next kill.

Arya kissed Gendry again, pressing herself to him, desperate to discover what living felt like to her now. He responded in kind. His hand gripped the curve of her hip as his mouth slid over hers. She snaked her hand behind his head, revelling in the ability to run her fingers through the regrowing hair.

‘There you are!' Gendry broke from Arya with a start at the voice's interruption and she nearly mewled at the loss of contact. A shadow was cast over them as the figure of Hot Pie joined them. 'Arya’s caught the biggest hare. I’m going to make you the best pie! Got a new recipe—'

‘Oh,’ Arya murmured, ‘I brought you a wedding gift.’

Gendry looked up at Hot Pie who was wittering on unfazed by their position on the floor or lack of response and was instead looking around the forge.

‘—Never been to a wedding before. Or a feast. Always fancied a wedding—'

‘Well,’ Gendry huffed, ‘what do I get you now?’

‘—I like what you’ve done with the place. Arya said you’ve been making repairs and improvements. I’d probably have gone for a little less grey myself—'

Arya smirked. ‘I’ll take a sword.’

‘-Still could be worse. Could be like Harrenhal. You two remember Harrenhal?'

'Hard to forget, Hot Pie,' Gendry said with a wince. Hot Pie nodded sagely. ‘I think Hot Pie’s about to take a sword,’ he muttered darkly to Arya and she bit back a smile. Clearly he'd taken the loss of their embrace as hard as she had. 'Want to introduce him to Sansa and we can, uh, get away for a bit?'

A heat rose in her cheeks at the thought of being alone with him again after so long. She had spent the whole journey to King's Landing forcing him from her mind and the whole journey back thinking of little else. In fact thinking of him had been a small refuge in her mind from the memories of the horrors of war.

'Definitely,' she said and the smile he gave her made her heart beat faster. 'He met Brienne years ago and he remembers her asking about Sansa.'

'Well Brienne will be delighted to be reunited,’ Gendry said as she moved off of him.

'Woah, Gendry, did you make this?' Hot Pie said, he had his hands on an ornate axe. 'Can you make me one?'

'He's got a bone to pick with Brienne about a biscuit he made me once,' Arya said as she offered Gendry her hand to stand.

'Ere, I've got this pot, right? Fixed the handle three times but the bottoms wearing thin reckon you could...?'

'Hot Pie,' Arya said, 'let's get that hare to the kitchens. Find you a good pot.'

Hot Pie's face lit up. 'Brilliant!'

'He's going to take on Brienne?' Gendry said quietly to Arya as Hot Pie lagged behind them, staring up at the walls and greeting anyone they passed. 'Does he know she’s knighted now?'

'He's always thought she was.'

'And he always was the bravest of us.'

'The smartest too.'


End file.
